The End of the Separate Self
“Enlightenment is absolute cooperation with the inevitable.” - Anthony de Mello
What if you knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that nothing in your experience was wrong, wayward, insufficient, lacking or in need of anything.
What if every step you’ve taken in your life, every thought you’ve had, every sensation, feeling, emotion, experience, was just what arose without any input or manipulation separate from it?
What if there was never a “you” at the helm of your “life” and instead, it has just been LIFE appearing as you?
The mind will say, but there have been terrible times…terrible losses…terrible mistakes…terrible insecurities…terrible loneliness.
The mind will assume because of these challenging experiences and feelings that we must have been misguided in some way; that we must have taken a wrong turn somewhere along the road.
This makes two assumptions.
That there can be anything apart from Consciousness and it’s expression
That, as something apart from Consciousness, you can act alone or in isolation
For a time, even these assumptions are baked into the cake. It’s part of the journey back to wholeness.
And yet something is powering every life form in existence; from the stars in the sky, to the ants in the ant hill, to the flowers, to the collective mind, to the seemingly individual person.
When it becomes known that nothing apart from experience itself is steering, manipulating or coercing, the narrative of the separate self begins to come apart at the seams.
ALL IS AS IT SHOULD BE.
You don’t need to like it.
We know that our greatest suffering comes not from what is happening but rather from our resistance to what is happening.
I’ll give you a poignant example of how this works and how the collapse of resistance ends our suffering.
I’m prone to bowel obstructions because of my challenged digestive system. In the past, when things have gotten twisted up, the treatment required to alleviate the obstruction is a trip to the hospital and a nasal gastric tube to empty out the contents of my stomach. It’s a deeply unpleasant procedure, having a tube shoved down your nose and into your stomach to drain the contents.
When I would find myself backed up and needing to go to the hospital, I would instantly start dreading this nasal gastric tube procedure. The last time I ended up in the emergency room, I even tried to convince the doctor who was treating me to surgically remove the obstructed piece of bowel, in order to bypass the tube procedure. I was that desperate to avoid it and in that much resistance.
Of course, my insistence on a surgical intervention was declined and the nasal gastric tube was on its way.
As I was lying in the bed in the emergency room, in pain and dreading the upcoming procedure, something within me gave. I surrendered. I stopped fighting the inevitable and said ‘yes’ to what was coming.
It was incredible what unfolded from that space.
Firstly, the obstructed piece of bowel began to move and flow; I could feel it.
Second, when the nurse finally came in to do the tube procedure, it was a breeze. It had never before been so easy and flawless.
Within a few hours, I was fully unobstructed, the tube was removed and I left the hospital.
But I was deeply struck by the shift in experience by my non-resistance to the experience.
This push and pull of resistance and non-resistance is also, of course, baked into the cake.
When it is seen that it is all just happening there is a relaxing of our grip on reality. A great tension leaves the body-mind and our lives are experienced from a different plane of consciousness.
It is the beginning of the end of the separate self.
It is the beginning of the end of wrongness.
This is the ultimate exhale of tension and worry. It is the beginning of living in open awareness. It is the beginning of a deep curiosity for the spontaneous unfolding of experience.
The end of the separate self is not a loss.
It is the reunion of a lifetime.